Economic-union Books

This book has some severe problems. It is written in a version of English not accessible to the educated reader due to the use of neologisms, poly sci jargon and unexplained abbreviations. It is useful strictly for the "in crowd" in the field of European Integration, but useless for the student or interested reader. The so-called theories are not theories at all, but rather various descriptive analyses or analytical deliberations.

Yes sir, this book of facts does nothing for the injured worker. Search sites are targeted finding information that will mislead you or complete rhetoric. We need books showing the laws that are blatantly ignored to the point that law-makers pretend they do not exist. I am a employer as is my partner and we would be glad to see a book that shows only the laws that help the injured workers of America. Perhaps a powerful book that will keep your Attorneys' honest, that will show you how to fight and win at their own game. Always quoting these laws from a good law book, not as the reader, but as a person struggling for survival, quote the right laws to your own Attorney `I studied law and know that what you do not know will not hurt your employer, it is not a co-op. it is survival for the injured worker and litigation control by your employer.

A poorly-revised doctoral dissertation, this book advances
ideology but not knowledge.

This is one of those books that bring coal to Newcastle. The main thesis of Part I is that not everything about Ottoman Empire was bad and the authors proceed to prove it by refuting statements of books written mostly in the 60's in communist countries (as if previously revisionist views on this topic haven't been almost the predominant opinion since the last few decades). The refutations are carried out mainly by quoting statements from a few books from the 50's and 60's, thus sparing the reader of supporting arguments and documentation on beliefs fostered by the most up-to-date stereotypes (such as the obscurantism of Orthodox church and the absolute rejection of 'ethnic nationalism'). We learn (together with new international students in their college orientation program)to be less Eurocentric with sentences like: "Europeans were caught almost completely off-guard by the remarkably rapid rise of the Ottoman 'menace' (as contemporaries perceived it)" : Quotation marks apparently aren't enough to warn us that the menace was subjective. They need to make the warning explicit. Throughout the book, the authors (although they 'are conversant with several European languages')have focused mainly on English-language secondary sources for the interesting reason that looking at primary sources and more specialized research monographs wouldn't be efficient enough for them to reach their geopolitical moral. Ironically, the political correct warnings and

quotation marks don't prevent the authors from their neo-colonial tendencies expressed most amusingly in their skepticism about the national liberation movements of the 19th century because of the new state's failure to become immediately indistinguishable in form from the most advanced Western European states. (By the way, they do prove convincinly that Western Europe has consistently been more prosperous than the new Balkan states.) Despite its being very readable the interested reader would be better off with other books on the subject (M. Glenny's book on the Balkans, Mazower's 'Dark Continent' come to mind) and, yes, 'more narrowly focused research monographs'.

this is the most tedious, obtuse presentation i have ever had the displeasure... the info is there but it will not flow! it is especially ominous that so many prestigious colleagues have touted this.

I'm confused by the previous reviewer's comments. This book is perfectly well-written. In fact, I'm reading it for personal interest--not because it was assigned to me for a class--and I still look forward to picking it up. It's actually exciting, to anyone who's interested in the topic.

Anyone who likes him might be interested to hear that Howard Zinn gives a strong endorsement on the back cover: "We have long needed a lively and intelligent history of the labor movement in the United States, and Phillip Yale Nicholson gives us just that. He provides a rich historical context and a refreshing class consciousness. I believe this book will be invaluable in educating a new generation about a much-neglected an crucial part of the nation's history."

The best thing about Nicholson's book is that he knows his stuff well enough that he avoids simply perpetuating cultural myth such as that the Democratic Party is the friend of labor. He notes, among other things, that when the appalling Taft-Hartley act came before Congress in 1947, not only did more Democrats vote for it than against it, but more of them voted to override Truman's veto of it than did not! Truly shocking, for anyone who thinks the Democrats are worth any real progressive purpose. On a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being favorable to labor, the Republicans are a 1 and the Dems are about a 3. The author never comes out and explicitly states this opinion, but the historical facts he relates are more than a enough to make the point clear.

My least favorite thing about the book is definitely the index. It doesn't even have entries for "Democratic Party" and "Republican Party"! Still, overall, I highly recommend this book as a read-through introduction to the labor movement, even if the lousy index makes is less valuable as a reference work.

By the way, in the top left tile of the front cover there is a picture of a young man in a bowler hat. Stuck in the front band of the hat is a card with lettering on it. The words are, "Bread or Revolution". I don't know exactly what the young man meant by this, but it's clear why the author chose it to decorate the front cover. That short phrase perfectly exemplifies the historic split within the labor movement between more conservative elements (aimed at making small economic gains for the working class) versus radical elements (aimed at transforming society as a whole and eliminating capitalists qua capitalists).

Chris Gifford is Acting Head of Behavioural Sciences at the University of Huddersfield. In this book, he claims that Euroscepticism arose from the loss of the empire and is a form of `post-imperial populism'. His account examines Britain's relationship with the EEC/EC/EU, from the postwar Labour government, to the post-imperial crisis of the 1950s and 1960s, to Thatcher and her sons Major, Blair and Brown.

He shows how in the 1980s the British state Thatcherised the EU, especially by imposing the Single Market. Thatcher pretended that the EU was just a market not a state in the making. Now the EU drives globalisation (formerly known as capitalism). Like the IMF and the World Bank, the EU breaks up national control over economies and societies, attacking the working class by liberalising labour markets and wrecking welfare states by privatisation.

Gifford notes, "The expansion of the economy had been built on deregulation of credit and the financial markets and not on any fundamental restructuring of the industrial base." Unfortunately he wants us to rely on the EU to restructure our industry, claiming that EU integration is `a facet of organised modernity consistent with national modernisation'. He sees the EU as progressive and the defence of the nation as reactionary.

He claims, "Euroscepticism has become the dominant and hegemonic position within the British political order." But surely it is common sense to distinguish what politicians say from what they do. The ruling class pretends to be Eurosceptic, to win popular support, while actually embedding us ever deeper in the ever-federalising EU. It wants EU membership, at whatever cost to democracy and sovereignty. The working class, the people, the vast majority, want democracy and sovereignty, at whatever cost to EU membership.

Gifford calls the issues of sovereignty and nationhood 'populist' and laments that "democratic politics is being displaced by populism." This is an attempt to smear these vital issues as undemocratic.

To fit his theory that Euroscepticism `has its roots in imperialism', Gifford has to place its rise in the 1950s and 1960s. Surely, if Euroscepticism arose from a fifty-year-old `end of empire' crisis, it would be weakening by now as we get further away from its cause. Instead, it is growing - and it is growing because we see the increasing damage that the EU is doing to our economy, our sovereignty and our democracy.

Was very disappointed with this book, the title I found to be misleading, and the author repeated herself a lot in the book, so I found it to be rather boring. The book was more about Berwind White Coal Company, and the immigrant's religion, than the miners of Windber. After interviewing thirty-five immigrants from this mining town, she did not give credit to all who were interviewed and who gave important information for this book.

Any work on Caucasus is based on Soviet authors .They got scientific rewards for DISTORTION OF CAUCASIAN HISTORY.Local authors KNOW the truth, but write lies.Poor non caucasian authors are led astray by their lies and decieve the readers.THE UNO, the OSCE are decieved and will be ashamed of their resolutions on Abkhazians because they are the Georgians, but are treated as nongeorgians.The aim of the liers was to weaken the Georgians being the only indigenous nation in south Caucasus.The Armenians are imposed immigrants from non caucasian territories of Iran and Turkey,and the Azerbaijan ethnos was invented in 1936 and consist of Tartar, Turkish, Jevanhsir, Lezgin,Kurdish and other mostly nomadic tribes of vast Eurasian territories.A non caucasian cannot write a proper book about Caucasus.A truthful bookes were published in Tbilisi in Georgian:PROF. TEIMURAS MIBCHUANI-"ABKHAZIANS",1996,200pages, Prof. GERONTI GASVIANI, "ABKHAZIANS",1998,Prof. BADRI GOGIA AND JEMAL GAMAKHARIA "ABKHAZIA-DOCUMENTS ON ALL LANGUAGES TRANSLATED INTO RUSSIAN,TBILISI,614 pages,my booklet is being printed in ENGLISH,RUSSIAN AND GEORGIAN in TBILISI AND IN NEW YORK - "CAUCASUS AND PROF. IVANE JAVAKHISHVILI". Dr. NATELA POPKHADZE,TBILISI,GEORGIA

Rarely have I read such a horrible book. The author's knowlegde of the Baltic States is mediocre at best and therefore the book is filled with errors, inaccuracies, biases and blantant displays of ignorance. In addition, even as the book came out a few years ago, it was already dated and its data did not reflect the economic, political or social reality of the Baltic States. The author's analysis of the three countries is quite unbalanced, dedicating too much coverage to Estonia, just enough to Lithuania and almost forgetting Latvia in the process. I do not recommend this book to anyone.

He did not set out to write a Stalin bashing book but just wrote what he saw. And because he wrote it in Berlin after he left Russia for good, he was able to write the truth as he saw it. He was able to tour the North Caucasus and Ukrainia in October of 1933 and observe first hand the results of the Famine. The Terrible Famine of 1932-33 was the one that Stalin labled a "myth" and spread denials of, and never asked international help for. Industrialization and its results are also covered.